Faith – The Reprobate's Guide to Pancakes

I Forgive You, Seventeen

If I said it was surreal to be here, I’d be understating it. I never thought I’d make it to thirty-four and I certainly never thought I’d have survived a long war, a thousand battles, a handful of converging and confounding lives to enjoy the awe of my own existence. I have to remind myself constantly that when people meet my awkward irreverence, they don’t have the context of the first few books. They don’t know that I’ve cried bathtubs of tears over the loss of time, opportunities, dear friends and loves. They weren’t there when, blood staining my neck, craze gripping my eyes, I crouched in the mirror and worked to wrench my own tooth out with pliers. Anything to stop the pain. They didn’t see the concessions I made for a moment of peace, the submission to a devil who couldn’t be satisfied. Most days I forget my past, but it never forgets me. I am the product of this conflagration and it seeps into all aspects of my life.

Yesterday I was seventeen years old. I had no anchor, no compass, just the want and wander that led me to strange new places. If I close my eyes I am still her, gasping for air and grasping for someone to pull me above myself. If I wanted a good thing, I certainly didn’t know what it looked like. I stopped writing and gave myself over to a man who didn’t know what to do with me but to abuse. Systematically he destroyed, masterfully like all thieves. He pulled the switch, first stealing my heart, then my joy and lastly my sanity. His brain was sharp, dangerous and uncommon. He could have done anything, he could have had it all.

Ed had an unmatched confidence, but I wouldn’t say it was unearned. He had survived 1000 doses of LSD intravenously administered, being a drug runner for John Gotti Jr. and most extraordinarily, a family full of fruitcakes. A few years before we met, he had been pistol whipped in a gang initiation and left for dead. He had total amnesia and when his mother came to visit him in the hospital, his head swollen to the size of a healthy melon, he demanded to see her ID. Unappeased, he threatened to turn her in to the FBI for impersonation. The most remarkable part of this experience was that, according to his sister, as he relearned how to walk and talk, he turned back in to the same fucker he was before. Even amnesia couldn’t set him back right.

Sometime around 2001 (who can remember?) the course of my life changed. It changed and I wasn’t even remotely aware. Ed, being the entertaining moron he was, jumped off the roof of his house during a party and landed on a cement slab, breaking his back in multiple places. When he fell his phone auto-dialed his mom. I like to think she heard his moaning and the chaos of the party and just hung up, because that’s the type of heinous bitch I knew her to be (later). Ed’s friends gave him ecstasy, propped him in a La-Z-Boy and left to lick their own drug induced wounds.

While Ed was suffering a back brace, I was just being seventeen. I had dropped out of high school, enrolled in college early and was working a crap job at a packaging store. I also had the most amazing dog, who I had rescued from death not long before. She could open our front door and let herself out. I had no way of knowing she was making her way around the neighborhood everyday, jumping fences and playing with other dogs. Then our new neighbor’s mom (heinous bitch) hit her with her car, and my life changed. That was the moment I met Amy, Ed’s sister. We met the same day I was fired from my job and it wasn’t long before she was asking me if I’d like to fill in at Ed’s business, since he had stupidly leapt from his roof and couldn’t walk. Looking back, it seems impossible that the dominos fell as they did by mistake.

Ed hated me. He hated that his sister had hired me on his behalf. He hated that he was in pain and in a back brace. He hated that he didn’t choose me, that I was whatever I was, that he needed the help and that he wasn’t mobile enough to get trashed at the Men’s Club. He took to giving me the worst possible duties at his jewelry store. This meant I stuffed the batteries, cleaned people’s disgusting gold grills, got cussed at by customers and occasionally he bested me with a Greco-Roman wrestling move, right there on the store floor. Obviously I fell in love, or the closest thing I knew to it. He told me about his girlfriend and how she was run over by a dump truck, got fat and withheld sex. It only makes sense that I would fall for that, right? But he was and still is one of the smartest people I’ve ever met and looking back, I can’t blame my seventeen year old self for being so easily groomed.

We eventually bought a home on the lake, a sports car, a jet ski and another business, and by we I mean he bought them and put the car on my credit because he had too many DUIs. It took me years to realize that my existence depended on him, and by the time I knew I was too far in. Thousands of dollars every week went up our noses or walked out the door in a thief’s hand. Our commingled drug problem was just a symptom of our converging mental issues. My dad had left me, his was a drunk with tons of money who’s affections couldn’t be earned. My mom had found a new life that didn’t include me and his was a cold, heartless bitch. Together we dragged what they had created, us, straight into the mire. Sucking on fentanyl pops, I shivered in the cold of our house as I crafted little bows for our Christmas tree and he sorted through mounds of dusty DVDS, all the while we died. Every day runs together as something wholly unworthy of remembering, but still I do. Dog hair on the couch, the floor littered in lottery tickets, oxycontin dust on the bathroom counter, splices of hose clamps scattered about, the sounds of asian porn and there’s a fiend at the door.

One day, somewhere along the way, I left him. Then I came back, somewhere along there also. One day, somewhere along the way, he told me he had cheated on me, was getting married, his mistress was pregnant and oh, I was fired. Somewhere along that path she had lied and I went back to him and to find her pants in my bedroom. Somewhere along the way I took the wrong medicine and tried to drown myself for three days of hallucinations as my sister held my hand and my mom prayed and the doctor said I was a junkie and sent me home. Somewhere in that time my friend murdered a man and dumped his body under a bush and ran from the police on live TV and sometime this month he comes home. Sometime back then, near the end of the chapter, Ed’s hands around my throat, my head slamming against the wall, I can recall his mother calling me a bitch. Bitch.

Somewhere along the way the years slipped by me and when I awoke, I found that I only knew how to live this way. Seventeen was a broken girl.

When I left that house, I thought I’d seen the worst. I thought the dysfunction was his and I had been lucky to walk away unscathed. I was wrong and I wasn’t unscathed. It was only preparation. The death and dying and demons waited for me. If I said it is surreal to think this time in my life was only the precursor to hell, I’d be understating it. Had I known that a few years later I’d be a far greater monster than Ed could have ever dreamed to be, I would have finished what I started in that bathtub. There is mercy in not knowing the future. Today, when I laugh at things that ought disturb or hope for people seemingly beyond redemption or try for better than I deserve or talk to you like you are more than what your words pretend, reference this book and the one you’ve lived and haven’t told. Because I’m reading it without your consent. You can thank Seventeen.

Wilson, the Low Leaper

I was built for a post-apocalyptic world, but most people haven’t gotten there yet and I hate to wait.

Trauma has isolated me from much of the world. Maybe this is what it feels like to come home from war. I wouldn’t know. I’ve never been to a war, or at least not in the traditional sense, and I suppose like me, folks who have are isolated as well. Maybe this is what it’s like to be a quantum physicist at a Tupperware party. Maybe this is what it’s like to be an English professor on planet Xenu or a Thomas Sowell ever. They’ve never told me, but I feel like we may all be living within our own unique habitations, rolling around in big plastic balls of experience all over this planet. Everyone is smiling, chatting about obscure foods and the ambience of their stunted emotions, vibrant vacancy, assaulting flatness. “I love dogs. Like, I love them,” someone says and then someone else produces a photo of their corgi, Wilson. Wilson loves to watch birds through the windows and chased a shadow once. They all chuckle and that guy on the left straightens his tie. And here we are, me, Thomas, the teacher on Xenu, General Survivor, rolling around in our awkward plastic balls as we eye these strange creatures. They like anime. Ok? What do I say to that?

I like dogs. I don’t dislike them. I don’t really care, honestly. If a dog was suffering I would help it. I like piercings and cobb salad also, but who wants to talk about that? Who even thinks about that? In 2009 I pulled a man’s false teeth from his mouth so he wouldn’t swallow them as he had a seizure from a heroin overdose. He had just come back in town after spending a year living under a bridge in New Orleans. When he left for New Orleans he persuaded a friend to sell his truck and come with him so he could fund their trip. They both lived under a bridge and every morning they sat at the day labor temp agency hoping to get enough work to fund their habit. Sometimes they would call and ask someone from North Carolina to ship them syringes or buy gift cards. Did you know that Louisiana doesn’t allow the purchase of syringes without a prescription and gift cards are highly devalued? Hepatitis. I don’t want to talk about dogs.

I’ve done my best over the past years to reintegrate back into society, but honestly, I was never very good at it even before I experienced trauma. When situations were dry, awkward or emotionally perilous, I had a habit of commandeering the narrative into my own arena, often to my own detriment. I was arrested for passing a stopped school bus when I was sixteen years old and I plead diarrhea to the judge. “Your honor, I had sudden diarrhea. I’m sorry.” I said in open court. That time it worked to my advantage. That time. Last week I told my coworker that she looked like the type who would be a bridezilla and I was surprised that she wasn’t. I thought it was a compliment. It didn’t land as I expected. I was built for a post-apocalyptic world, but most people haven’t gotten there yet and I hate to wait.

I find it so difficult to entertain mundane conversation about weekend plans and mild illness. I want to change things! I want to be that person I knew from my first recalled memory that I was created to be. I want to shake it up, stir it around, juggle it behind my back and throw it triumphantly to the next. People are dying, I’ve seen them. People are hurting, I’ve been one. Neglected children are on their way to being destructive adults and we love dogs. We love sushi, too and that commute was terrible and Sailor Moon is my favorite. I don’t begrudge you, I just can’t take part. I can’t understand. I can’t form a response. My friends are dead, in prison dying, in the streets dying, clinging to what is left of their souls. My friends are ghosts. I have none. I have what I cling to desperately. I have faith, I have a family, I have proven endurance. I have a wall that is higher than my eyes can see and your dog doesn’t even come close to clearing it.

“You think weird,” I was told. I think like a sane person who was locked in a mental institution for decades only to come out and learn that the world has become the haunting ground for spiritual zombies. I think like a person who has embodied a corpse. I think like a person who has seen beyond the veil. I think like a person who is perpetually trapped in two worlds. I can’t tell most people what I’ve seen. They need safe zones and ice-cream socials. Everyday I want to scream, “You don’t know! You have it so good!” but instead I turn my head and hate Wilson silently. I don’t want a support group, I want a world where people are honest about their experiences. I want a world where we can communicate openly about what we have endured, witnessed — and then get over it. Half of me already lives in this world and if you choose to visit, we don’t require a passport. The other half of me begrudgingly pulls a paycheck.

I know who’s dying and why. I know the status of their wasting and I know how it feels to be left behind. I know how it feels to know things no one wants to know or hear or think about or even believe exists because it makes them culpable. I know how it feels to tell the heinous truth and be shunned for the stun of it. I know what happens when the curtain is drawn and the soul stabbing pain of finality which is so great it makes death seem delightful. I’ve seen centuries of consequences pass before me, I’ve seen the waste of a different kind of war and I’m a better person for it. Those things made me worthy of knowing. Maybe you know a different loss, a different stab and if you do, I want to know it too. I want to know how you got the dirt under your nails and why you have that eye twitch and that thing you swore no one would ever understand because I swear too, I will try.

I want to tell it all true, hear it all true and never, ever have to pretend to care about a single thing that can’t clear the fence.

Swimming Without Shores

I don’t watch movies. They bore me. I rarely watch TV. It irritates me. I can’t be scared anymore. I don’t get butterflies in my stomach or feel ignorantly hopeful about anything. I make no assumptions that my time on Earth will be OK. I’m never surprised when things go poorly. I assume the worst of strangers, the best of no one and consider all of my words will be used against me. I clean when I’m anxious, cry when I’m out of ideas and when I’m both, I sit very quietly and allow it to crush me from all sides. I pray and then pray that I will know what to pray, the perfect sequence to unlock the will of God. Friends are few and at a distance, family is inside but not beyond my guard tower. Everyone is subject to removal. They call this Fear.

I read books. They fuel me. I write stories. They cleanse me. I am amazed by the power of my own mind and the places it takes me. I am electrified by the formation of a thought I’ve never had before and giddy when it flows effortlessly like warm butter. I am always surprised when people prove me wrong. I forgive the worst of strangers, expect the best of no one but myself and consider that if I am willing to say it, I better be willing to stand by it. I sleep when I’m content, share with everyone when I’m creative and the two make a magical pairing. I forget God in the midst of my mess and kick myself for relying on my own understanding. The friends who remain love me more than I deserve, family, beyond all cause, and only because they choose. Everyone is necessary. They call this Love.

I had more ‘friends’ in addiction than I do today. Indiscriminate, I had a home in my sick heart for all. Today, I live in world, I’ve found, that very few may enter. It’s healthy, it’s lonely and it’s what I must do to survive.

There’s a kind of shock that comes when you wake up from a nightmare. When you wake up and realize that, beyond all belief, the nightmare was real, the shock settles in for good and becomes a part of your arsenal. Christ tells me to fight this fear with faith, experience tells me to respect it by instinct. The two war daily within me. I am forgiving and condemning. I am love and hate. I am surrendered, I am my own God. I am patient, I am incensed. I am given over to emotion and a controlled demolition. Every day I put my feet on the floor, fail, cry and take a step.

Tonight I saw an acquaintance in line at the grocer. I don’t know which I bowed to in that moment, Christ, fear or both in concession. He was/is in very poor condition with tremendously swollen legs and cracked soles and no, I don’t know the exact cause. Were I to give an educated guess, I would say a heart infection brought on by drug abuse. I may be off base. Either way, I turned and left without speaking to him, leaving him to walk home on his injury. I don’t feel bad and I would hope that my relationship with God is so that I would know unequivocally if I had erred. I am a brother in Christ but also a mother in Christ and thus I feel a responsibility to stay far removed from people in these situations. This is the tightrope I walk between love and safety.

I will pray for him and truthfully, there I am most powerful. I don’t know how to function well between these two places without erring. It may be impossible. I am only sure that it isn’t my job to save, only to obey. I’ll leave the saving to Christ, he’s far better at it than I.

1 John 3:1 See what kind of love the Father has given to us, that we should be called children of God; and so we are. The reason why the world does not know us is that it did not know him.